[danilovesky]

palawan, is Lime stable for you? How is the cold boot time? I had to go back to Dell's compilation (a fresh one, from 3 January 2012) because of faster boot time and more stable operation. The installation process for Dell distribution is not perfect, but the final result (in my experience) is next to perfect - see details in a neighbouring thread - http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/goog...ion-guide.html

[palawan]

danilovesky,

I'm glad you asked

cold boot time=20.18 seconds (words on the screen per ChromiumOS). I've seen it as low as 18 seconds, but definitely not as quick as the Dell which I've seen as low as 11, averaging around 14 seconds.

The Chromium Lime (for me) has finally delivered the promise of a Chromebook on the Mini 9. I have a separate netbook (Samsung NF-310 which I use most of the time, but I really enjoy the Mini 9 running Chromium Lime on the 8GB internal SSD.

The cons:

1. trackpad gestures don't work (although right side single scroll works)
2. trackpad click doesn't work (which is first thing I disable anyway, so not a loss for me, but for other people could be deal-breaker. I've tried hard to get used to it, but just not for me).

The pros:

everything!

1. I can watch a video for long periods of times and the "display" does not go crazy (as my experience with Dell's Chromium)
2. battery indicator, wifi indicator/config, time, caps lock indicator - top right hand corner.
3. I can listen to google music on one tab and still surf the internet on other tabs with no problems or noticeable slowdown.
4. Close the lid - sleep. Open the lid and Wifi connects within 10 seconds. Not so with my experience with Dell's Chromium. If the Chromium Lime has not been put to sleep for a long time, Wifi connection is instant. I just opened the lid from closing the lid last night and it was connected to wifi instantly. Power cord was not plugged in.
5. I hardly reboot. closing the lid and opening it several times a day works flawlessly.
6. It locked up on me once. I couldn't even believe it when it happened, lol. I was opening a bunch of tabs, one after another, and one was a video, i think, but anyway, it locked up. Rebooted by holding down power. It hasn't happened since.
7. My wife borrowed it and was asking me for my email password because of the login prompt and I said use your google account, and she was like, wow, how did I do that? lol.
8. My 11yo niece wanted to use my Samsung netbook, I showed her to use the Mini 9 Chromium using guest account once. She was staying with us for a few days and the mini 9 got so much use it hasn't seen in a long time. she especially likes watching youtube videos on it. She complains about not having netflix, tho. I wish Chromium would support netflix soon.
9. Chromium Lime can recognize a Wifi that needs authentication (ie starbucks or mcdonalds wifi). it recognized and suggested I login using guest when I connected to our work wifi which needed a username/password authentication. After authenticating, ctrl-shift-q, and i logged in normally to my google account.
10. Lock support. ctrl-shift-L

I'm thinking of getting a 3-cell battery as the extended battery i have now makes it look awkward. it would truly be a Chromebook! I think of this thing as an android tablet (because of the apps!) without the touchscreen (lol), but with a keyboard

danilovesky, when you're listening to video or google music, what happens if you plug in a headphone? does the sound play on both the speakers and on the headphone?

I can't really see myself going back to the Dell distribution because of items 1-5 on my list...

Originally Posted by danilovesky

palawan, is Lime stable for you? How is the cold boot time? I had to go back to Dell's compilation (a fresh one, from 3 January 2012) because of faster boot time and more stable operation. The installation process for Dell distribution is not perfect, but the final result (in my experience) is next to perfect - see details in a neighbouring thread - http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/goog...ion-guide.html

[danilovesky]

Originally Posted by palawan

danilovesky,

danilovesky, when you're listening to video or google music, what happens if you plug in a headphone? does the sound play on both the speakers and on the headphone?

I can't really see myself going back to the Dell distribution because of items 1-5 on my list...

palawan,

I just tried this - started a youtube video without headphones - sound goes through the speakers (as expected), then plugged the headphones in and the audio switched to the headphones (also as expected).

However, I noticed a minor problem here - the speakers started making a buzzing noise, like you would hear when a mic is plugged in. This buzzing sound is nearly unnoticeable and does not go louder if I increase the volume (the sound of the headphones goes louder though, as one would expect).

About the problems of old Dell distribution of ChromiumOS - ost of them went away in a recent compilation (3Jan2012):
1. video - have not noticed any problem in the last few days, but I did not really watched a lot of video, maybe 20-30 clips.
2. indicators - all of them are present now (the same as in Lime)
3. WiFi - quite stable and picks up the signal quickly (around 2-3 seconds). It did not work during the first boot though (see my installation guide for details)
4,5. lid - I also try not to switch it off during the day, just closing the lid, no problems noticed. Still switch off during the night to get rid of the flashing led..
...
10. Ctrl+Shift+L also works

If something goes wrong with your Lime experience - give Dell another chance

[palawan]

If something goes wrong with your Lime experience - give Dell another chance

I will definitely do! It looks like all of the issues I had with the Dell distribution have been fixed. Thanks for all the info.

[brigont]

Folks,

I have a mini 1010 (not 10V) with chrome OS running but I can't seem to get the wireless operational. Wired web does work

Anyone know if there is a version of Chrome that does support the 1010 wireless card. If not, any after market mini wireless cards? I would like to attach the 1010 to my home theater

Thoughts?

Brian

[kwantlen]

Originally Posted by palawan

I will definitely do! It looks like all of the issues I had with the Dell distribution have been fixed. Thanks for all the info.

I used LIME for a while but switched to the new Dell distribution. Sofar it works better for me.

Right now I am runnning the OS off a USB stick. Some time ago someone reported glitches when installed onto the SSD; any experiences?

[brigont]

Never mind...

All is working now on my 1010 using instructions I found in another thread... wifi and all working great!

Thanks again to all forum contributors.

bg

Originally Posted by brigont

Folks,

I have a mini 1010 (not 10V) with chrome OS running but I can't seem to get the wireless operational. Wired web does work

Anyone know if there is a version of Chrome that does support the 1010 wireless card. If not, any after market mini wireless cards? I would like to attach the 1010 to my home theater

Thoughts?

Brian

[jamesgfilms]

I have a mini 10v with mac osx 10.6.7 running, I love Chrome OS, is it possible to dual boot the two OS's though? I would migrate wholly to Chrome OS if it could handle torrents and streaming content to my xbox mind...

[hobbitt]

I just installed the January 3 Dell build on an original Mini 9 (Inspiron 910) using the instructions from the download site. This Mini has been upgraded to a 16G SSD and 2G of memory.

I had a few problems during the install:

• I had to connect a LAN cable to get past the primary page (no wireless networks present), which isn't surprising since you have to run a script to get a good Broadcomm driver installed.
• The userid/password combo (dell/dell1234) didn't work. I finally logged on as guest, and was able to follow the install doc from there. The dell1234 password does work for the required sudo commands.

Almost everything works, although the initial boot time was atrocious (60 seconds!). After the first time it seems to have settled down to around 20 seconds. Non-firmware boot=19.17; kernel=1.96; system=7.51; chrome=1.1. Shutdown's screaming fast, tho.

Lid close to sleep and re-open to wake works, with a few seconds to get the wireless adapter back online.

The touchpad works for single-finger left-click and double-finger right-click (once enabled). The two-finger scroll works. But two-finger drag and drop doesn't. (To be honest, I was surprised any of this worked given the age of the machine.)

The clock, wireless indicator, and battery level all appear correctly. Volume controls (function keys) work, as do the display brightness controls.

The Sleep, Wireless, and Battery function keys don't do anything. Certainly the battery key is not needed since the state is always displayed.

PrtScreen blinked the screen, but I couldn't paste anything into a Google doc I had open, so I don't know if that works.

I don't have a secondary display, so I don't know if the switch-display key works (Fn+8).

Plugging in a USB key works, and a directory display is presented. I didn't see a way to eject/unmount the key, so I just unplugged it. Hope it's safe!

I have a Bluetooth USB dongle, which lights up, but of course doesn't do anything.

All in all, a good installation. Kudos to the Dell engineers for providing the build.

Edit: Just tried a Google+ Hangout and the web cam works.

[nick_sub]

I've also just installed the 3 Jan build. Generally I think it's really good but after waking up from sleep the screen goes blank after a few seconds though the mouse cursor is still visible and still works. The only way out is to power off. This only seems to happen when it's running on battery, it wakes up fine and reconnects to WIFI when on AC power.

I also tried Hexxeh's Lime build of a few days ago but that had the same problem. Does anyone know of any workarounds or anything I could try?

Mine is a standard Mini 9 with 8GB SSD and I'm running Chromium off a tint 8GB usb drive.

As hobbit says, thanks to Dell for producing this as my XP installation is really struggling on disk space and this could give it a whole new lease of life.

One other thing, is it possible to get Chromium to automatically log in so I don't have to type my password every time I power on? Thanks.